Methods and systems for displaying relevant participants in a video communication

ABSTRACT

Exemplary embodiments relate to techniques for selecting which users should be shown in an interface during a group call, and for presenting the users on (potentially small) displays. According to some embodiments, a most-relevant speaker is selected for display on each call participants&#39; screen. When deciding which user to display in the primary window of a video call, a dominant or relevant user is selected. A dominant user may be selected based on the audio energy represented by the audio packets for the user&#39;s device; alternatively dominant user selection may be implemented using artificial intelligence or machine learning, allowing for better differentiation between speaking and noise. On each user&#39;s display that does not belong to the relevant user, the current relevant user is shown. On the current relevant user&#39;s display, the previous relevant user is shown.

BACKGROUND

Communications systems allow two or more users to communicate byexchanging text, audio, video, or other forms of communications. Forexample, communications systems may allow a group of users toparticipate in a real-time video conversation. As mobile technology hasproliferated and improved, communications applications have allowedusers to communicate using devices with smaller displays. However, groupcall interfaces designed for large displays may not translate well tosmaller displays.

A second issue relating to communications applications concerns theapplications' main displays. Some communications applications attempt toidentify the currently-active speaker display that speaker in aprominent portion of the interface. Conventional techniques forselecting and displaying an active speaker, however, often fail toidentify the most relevant speaker in a call. As a result, the displayof group video calls may appear disjointed, and less like a fluidconversation, to participants.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A depicts an exemplary interface for a group video communication.

FIG. 1B depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a relevantparticipant from the perspective of another participant.

FIG. 1C depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a new relevantparticipant from the perspective of another participant.

FIG. 1D depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a relevantparticipant from the perspective of the relevant participant.

FIG. 1E depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a new relevantparticipant from the perspective of the previous relevant participant.

FIG. 1F depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a relevantparticipant from the perspective of the next relevant participant.

FIG. 1G depicts an exemplary interface displayed on the next relevantparticipant's device after selecting the next relevant participant asthe relevant participant.

FIG. 2A depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a first relevantparticipant selected on the basis of dominance.

FIG. 2B depicts an exemplary interface for displaying a second relevantparticipant selected on a basis other than dominance.

FIG. 2C depicts an exemplary interface for displaying the first relevantparticipant after overtaking the second relevant participant accordingto a relevance metric.

FIG. 3A depicts an exemplary communications interface having a reducedsize.

FIG. 3B depicts examples of various interactions with the communicationsinterface of FIG. 3A.

FIG. 3C depicts an alternative exemplary communications interface havinga reduced size.

FIG. 3D depicts an alternative exemplary communications interface havinga reduced size and a roster.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart depicting an exemplary method for selecting arelevant participant.

FIG. 5 depicts a simplified data structure for a communications packetsuitable for use with exemplary embodiments.

FIG. 6 is a data flow diagram depicting an exchange of information in anetwork when selecting a relevant participant according to exemplaryembodiments.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart depicting an exemplary method for displaying areduced-size communications interface.

FIG. 8A is a block diagram providing an overview of a system includingan exemplary centralized communications service;

FIG. 8B is a block diagram providing an overview of a system includingan exemplary distributed communications service;

FIG. 8C depicts the social networking graph of FIGS. 8A-8B in moredetail;

FIG. 9 is a block diagram depicting an example of a system for amessaging service;

FIG. 10 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary computing devicesuitable for use with exemplary embodiments;

FIG. 11 depicts an exemplary communication architecture; and

FIG. 12 is a block diagram depicting an exemplary multicarriercommunications device.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A number of issues are presented when designing a call interface for asmall display. For instance, many call interfaces show a large mainwindow that includes the currently-active speaker and a smaller windowfor other participants. However, conventional techniques for selectingthe active speaker suffer from deficiencies that may cause less-relevantspeakers to be displayed in the main window.

For example, when a new active speaker becomes more dominant than anoriginal active speaker, one possible technique is to display the newactive speaker on each participants' display, except for the new activespeaker. Instead of seeing themselves, the new active speaker may see,for example, the second-most active speaker. However, the second-mostactive speaker is typically not the most relevant person to display onthe active speaker's interface; once the active speaker begins to speak,the second-most active speaker is typically not speaking themselves.Instead, the participant identified as the second-most-active may beflagged for the simple reason that noise is present in their audiochannel, making it appear as though they are also speaking.

In another example of a possible technique, an interface may display thecurrently active speaker as soon as they become active. When multipleparticipants are speaking, or when some participants have noise on theiraudio channel, this may cause the display of the currently activeparticipant to quickly change back-and-forth between different people.

When the second-most-relevant speaker is displayed on the currentlyactive speaker's interface, and when the interface changes rapidlybetween multiple speakers, a video call may feel disjointed and lesslike a fluid conversation. This may detract from the experience of thevideo call.

On a large display, this problem is somewhat mitigated because theremaining (non-active) participants may be shown in sufficient detail insmaller windows beside the main window; however, on a small display(such as on a mobile device) there is often not sufficient room todisplay the remaining participants, or at least not to display them insufficient detail to mitigate this problem.

Still further, call interfaces tend to dominate small screens, leavinglittle or no room to perform other activities.

Exemplary embodiments described below relate to techniques for selectingwhich users should be shown in an interface during a group call, and forpresenting the users on (potentially small) displays. According to someembodiments, a most-relevant speaker is selected for display on eachcall participants' screen. When deciding which user to display in theprimary window of a video call, a dominant or relevant user is selected.A dominant user may be selected based on the audio energy represented bythe audio packets for the user's device; alternatively dominant userselection may be implemented using artificial intelligence or machinelearning, allowing for better differentiation between speaking andnoise. In some embodiments, a relevancy metric may be calculated for theusers, and if one user is determined to be more relevant than thedominant speaker, the dominant speaker may be overridden with therelevant user. On each user's display that does not belong to therelevant/dominant user, the current relevant/dominant user is shown. Onthe current relevant user's display, the previous relevant user isshown.

Because the previous relevant user is shown on the active user's screen(instead of, e.g., the second-most-relevant user), the currently-activeuser is most likely to see the person who just spoke or was mostrecently relevant. As a result, the video call feels like a fluidconversation.

In some embodiments, a full-size call interface may be shrunk down intoa chathead that makes good use of limited screen real estate, especiallywhen being used on a mobile device. On the smaller chathead, thedominant user is shown, and a roster of users is shrunk and may exhibitreduced functionality. The chathead may be moved around the screen, andother applications may continue to run in the space not occupied by thechathead. As a result, the user can continue to interact with otherapplications or content on their device while still engaging in a videocall. Using the above-noted techniques for selecting a relevant ordominant user, the main display is likely to be taken up with thespeaker that the current participant most wants to see (thus, e.g.,mitigating the effects of having a reduced-size interface on an alreadysmall display). These embodiments may be well-suited to situations suchas multiplayer gaming, group sports watching, and business meetings,during which conversations between groups of people may be taking placein the context of other activities.

As an aid to understanding, a series of examples will first be presentedbefore detailed descriptions of the underlying implementations aredescribed. It is noted that these examples are intended to beillustrative only and that the present invention is not limited to theembodiments shown.

Reference is now made to the drawings, wherein like reference numeralsare used to refer to like elements throughout. In the followingdescription, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details areset forth in order to provide a thorough understanding thereof. However,the novel embodiments can be practiced without these specific details.In other instances, well known structures and devices are shown in blockdiagram form in order to facilitate a description thereof. The intentionis to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives consistentwith the claimed subject matter.

In the Figures and the accompanying description, the designations “a”and “b” and “c” (and similar designators) are intended to be variablesrepresenting any positive integer. Thus, for example, if animplementation sets a value for a=5, then a complete set of components122 illustrated as components 122-1 through 122-a may include components122-1, 122-2, 122-3, 122-4, and 122-5. The embodiments are not limitedin this context.

FIGS. 1A-1G depict various examples of full-sized interfaces fordisplaying a relevant user in a group call. FIG. 1A depicts a generalexample of the interface, while FIGS. 1B-1G show examples of theinterface used in particular contexts.

FIG. 1A depicts an interface 100 for a communications applicationadapted to show a group video call. The interface 100 may be displayedon the device of a first user. The interface 100 may include a previewwindow 102, in which the first user can see the video feed that they arecurrently sending to the rest of the participants.

The interface 100 may further include a main window 104 in which thespeaker that has been currently selected as dominant or otherwisemost-relevant is shown. The main window 104 may be the most prominentwindow in the interface 100, and may display a video feed that is largerin size and/or at a higher resolution than the video in the previewwindow 102 or other windows (such as the roster 108 described below).The main window 104 may display the speaker that is most dominant in thevideo call (e.g., the speaker who is determined to be most likely to bespeaking and the current leader of the conversation, to whom otherparticipants are currently listening). In some cases, anotherparticipant other than the most-dominant participant may be morerelevant in the call than the most-dominant speaker. In thesesituations, the other most-relevant participant may be shown in the mainwindow 104.

Optionally, the participant displayed in the main window 104 may beidentified on the interface 100 by an identifier 106. The identifier 106may be, for example, the name or handle of the participant displayed inthe main window 104.

A roster 108 of participants in the call may also be displayed. Theroster 108 may include a window 108-i dedicated to each participant inthe call, or may exclude the currently-relevant speaker displayed in themain window 104. Each window 108-i may display a video feed of theassociated participant (if such a feed is available). The roster 108 maybe associated with some functionality. For example, selecting one of thewindows 108-i (as shown in FIG. 1A) may lock the selected participant tothe main window for a period of time (or until the locking is manuallycanceled, or until an event occurs, such as another video feed becomingmost relevant). Alternatively or in addition, selecting a window 108-imay cause additional information about the associated participant to bedisplayed, among other possibilities. The windows 108-i of the roster108 may each be associated with an identifier 110-i identifying theparticipant in the window 108-i. The identifier 110-i may be, forexample, a name or handle of the participant. In some cases, theparticipant may be associated with a long identifier and a shortidentifier (e.g., a full name and a nickname, or a full name and a firstname only). In some embodiments, the short identifier may be displayedas the identifier 110-i, while the longer identifier may be displayed asthe identifier 106 for the main window 104.

As noted above, the user appearing in the main window 104 may change asdifferent users become dominant or more relevant. FIGS. 1B-1G showexamples of different users becoming dominant, from the perspective ofdifferent participants in the video call. In these examples, the call isa three-way video call between the users Jack, Jill, and John.

On the bottom portion of FIGS. 1B-1G, a timeline is present showing theorder in which different participants in the video call become thedominant speaker. As shown in these timelines, at time t⁻¹ Jack is thedominant speaker. At time t₀, Jill supersedes Jack to become thedominant speaker, and at time t₁ John supersedes Jill to become thedominant speaker.

FIG. 1B depicts the interface at time t₀ from the perspective of Jack(whose feed is shown in the preview window 102). Jill has just becomethe dominant user, superseding Jack. In this case, Jill appears in themain window 104 of Jack's display because Jill's feed is now dominant.More generally, when a new second dominant user supersedes an originalfirst dominant user, the first dominant user's main window 104 displaysthe video stream of the second dominant user.

FIG. 1C depicts the interface at time t₁ from the perspective of Jack(whose feed is shown in the preview window 102). John has just becomethe dominant user, superseding Jill. In this case, John appears in themain window 104 of Jack's display because John's feed is now dominant.More generally, when a new second dominant user supersedes an originalfirst dominant user, a third party's display (not belonging to the firstdominant user or the second dominant user) shows the second dominantuser's video stream.

FIG. 1D depicts the interface at time t₀ from the perspective of Jill(whose feed is shown in the preview window 102). Jill has just becomethe dominant user, superseding Jack. In this case, Jack appears in themain window 104 of Jill's display because Jill's feed is now dominant,but Jill's feed is not generally displayed in the main window 104 ofJill's own display. Instead, Jill's main window 104 displays theprevious dominant speaker (Jack). More generally, when a new seconddominant user supersedes an original first dominant user, the seconddominant user's main window 104 shows the previous dominant speaker (inthis case the first dominant speaker).

FIG. 1E depicts the interface at time t₁ from the perspective of Jill(whose feed is shown in the preview window 102). John has just becomethe dominant user, superseding Jill. In this case, John appears in themain window 104 of Jill's display because John's feed is now dominant.More generally, when a new second dominant user supersedes an originalfirst dominant user, the first dominant user's display shows the seconddominant user's video stream.

FIG. 1F depicts the interface at time t₀ from the perspective of John(whose feed is shown in the preview window 102). Jill has just becomethe dominant user, superseding Jack. In this case, Jill appears in themain window 104 of John's display because Jill's feed is now dominant.This context is similar to the one depicted in FIG. 1C.

FIG. 1G depicts the interface at time t₀ from the perspective of John(whose feed is shown in the preview window 102). John has just becomethe dominant user, superseding Jill. In this case, Jill continues toappear in the main window 104 of John's display because, although John'sfeed is now dominant, John's feed is not generally shown in John's ownmain window. This context is similar to the one depicted in FIG. 1D.

In some cases, there may not be a previous dominant user to display incontexts similar to the one depicted in FIGS. 1D and 1G. For example,when a video call is first initiated, there may not be a previousdominant user. In this case, a default user may be shown in the mainwindow (e.g., the call organizer), or no user may be shown in the mainwindow, among other possibilities.

Although dominance is used as the primary metric in the examplesdepicted in FIGS. 1B-1G, other relevancy metrics may also be considered.FIGS. 2A-2C depict an example in which a relevancy metric overridesdominance in a call. In these examples, a timeline at the bottom of eachFigure show which user is dominant through a portion of the call. Inthis case, Jill is the dominant speaker at times t₀, t₁, and t₂.

FIG. 2A depicts Jack's interface at time t₀, and hence Jack's feedappears in the preview window 102. At this time, Jill is the dominantspeaker and there is no other relevant information to cause Jill'sdesignation as the most-relevant participant to be overridden. As aresult, Jill's feed appears in Jack's main window 104.

FIG. 2B depicts Jack's interface at time t₁. At this time, Jill remainsthe dominant speaker. However, something occurs in John's feed thatcauses John's feed to become particularly relevant. For instance, inthis example a media effect 202 is applied to John's feed. Media effectsmay come in a variety of forms, and may include (for example) graphicaloverlays applied to a feed by the owner of the feed or another user,audio tracks added to a feed, augmented reality effects added to a feed,filters or distortions applied to a feed, etc. The addition of a mediaeffect 202 may cause John's feed to become particularly relevant for aperiod of time (e.g., for the duration of the media effect or for someother period of time). This relevancy may be evaluated in view of arelevancy metric and, if the relevancy is sufficient, may cause thedominant speaker to be overridden. In this example, John's relevant feedoverrides Jill's dominant feed, and John's feed is shown in the mainwindow 104 of Jack's interface (meanwhile, on John's interface, eitherJohn's media-enhanced feed may be displayed in the main window 104, orthe previous relevant user, in this case Jill, may be shown).

Eventually, the media effect 202 may wear off, and the main window 104may revert to the dominant speaker as shown in FIG. 2C. In some cases,the main window 104 may revert to the dominant speaker before the mediaeffect 202 wears off, if the relevancy associated with the user to whomthe media effect has been applied falls below a level that allows therelevancy to override the dominant speaker.

FIGS. 1A-2C depict examples of full-size interfaces. In someembodiments, an option may be provided to shrink the full-size interfaceto a reduced-size interface 302, as shown in FIG. 3A. The reduced-sizeinterface 302 may take up a portion of the available display area thatis less than the entirety of the display area, e.g. half or less of thedisplay area.

The full-size interface may be shrunk, for example, in response toselecting a button in the full-size interface, registering a particulartouch gesture on the full-size interface, audio commands, etc. Whenchanging from the full-size interface to a reduced-size interface 302,an animation may cause the full-size interface to shrink and smoothlytransition into the reduced-size interface 302.

The reduced size interface 302 may be displayed on top of a secondaryinterface 300. The secondary interface 300 may be, for example, anotherapplication interface or an interface for an operating system. Thesecondary interface 300 may support operations being performedconcurrently with the video call shown in the reduced-size interface 302such that the user can interact with the secondary interface 300 whilestill remaining in and viewing the video call.

The reduced-size interface 302 may optionally include a preview window304, similar to the preview window 102 shown in FIG. 1A. The previewwindow 304 may optionally display a reduced-resolution video feedassociated with the user of the device on which the reduced-sizeinterface 302 is displayed. Alternatively or in addition, one or morecall controls may be displayed in this location (e.g., mute, end call,transition to full-size interface, etc.).

The reduced-size interface 302 may further include a main window 306(e.g., corresponding to the main window 104 in FIG. 1A). The main window306 may display the dominant or relevant user as described above.

The reduced-size interface 302 may further include a roster 308displaying information pertaining to other users in the call (e.g., theusers not appearing in the main window 306, possibly with the exceptionof the device owner who is displayed in the preview window 304.

The roster 308 may be similar to the roster 108 described in connectionwith FIG. 1A, but may exhibit reduced functionality. For example, theroster 308 may display information such as a picture or ID of the user,but may not display a current video feed from the user. Alternatively orin addition, the roster 308 may provide no interactive functionality(e.g., selecting a user to lock the main window 306 on the user's videofeed), whereas such functionality may be provided by the full-sizeroster 108.

When an interaction is registered in an area of the display, theinterface affected by the interaction may be dependent on where theinteraction is received. For example, if the interaction is registeredin the reduced-size interface 302, the interaction may trigger an actionwith respect to the reduced-size interface (e.g., moving thereduced-size interface 302, growing the reduced-size interface 302 to afull-size interface, muting the current user's audio and/or video feed,etc.).

For instance, FIG. 3B depicts an example of moving the reduced-sizeinterface 302 on a touch screen. The dashed lines 314 indicate anoriginal location of the reduced-size interface 302. A haptic contactsignal is registered at a first location 310, which is determined to bewithin the boundaries of the reduced-size interface 302. The user thenslides their finger to a second location 312, and a haptic releasesignal is detected at the second location 312. Based on the differencebetween the first location 310 and the second location 312, thereduced-size interface 302 may be moved to a new location over thesecondary interface 300.

In some cases, certain interactions (e.g., certain touch gestures) maybe configured to send commands directly to the reduced-size interface302 regardless of where the interactions are registered. For example, athree- or four-finger pinch-out gesture may cause the reduced-sizeinterface 302 to transition into a full-size call interface regardlessof whether the pinch-out gesture is registered partially or entirelyoutside of the reduced-size interface 302.

The size and/or position of the reduced-size interface 302 may varyautomatically depending on the context. In some embodiments, a portionof the secondary interface 300 may be identified as particularlyrelevant or important, and the reduced-size interface 302 may beautomatically sized and positioned so as to avoid the relevant orimportant portion(s). For instance, if the secondary interface 300pertains to a game having controls and a primary display area, thereduced-size interface may be automatically sized and positioned so asnot to cover the controls or display area. In some cases, the secondaryinterface 300 may define (e.g., through metadata) an acceptable area inwhich the reduced-size interface 302 may be displayed.

The embodiments depicted in FIGS. 3A and 3B are exemplary, and otherconfigurations of the main window 304, the preview window 306, and theroster 308 may be used. For example, FIG. 3C depicts an embodiment inwhich the main window 304 and the preview window 306 are circular inshape, with the preview window 306 overlaid on the main window 304. Theembodiment in FIG. 3C omits the roster 308; in another embodimentdepicted in FIG. 3D, the roster 308 may also be represented as a set ofcircular windows. As in previous embodiments, the chatheads depicted inFIGS. 3C and 3D may be moved around the display, and the roster 308 mayexhibit reduced functionality as compared to full-screen embodiments.

Using dominant and/or relevant speaker detection as described herein,alone or in conjunction with a reduced-size interface, video callsappear to be more fluid and conversation-like, particularly on a devicehaving a small screen (although embodiments are not limited tosmall-screen devices). Moreover, the reduced-size display allows a userto participate in a video call on a small screen device while stilltaking part in other activities, some of which may be enhanced by theparticipation in the group call (e.g., games, sporting events,presentations, etc.)

This brief summary is intended to serve as a non-limiting introductionto the concepts discussed in more detail below, in connection with FIGS.4-8C. However, before discussing further exemplary embodiments, a briefnote on data privacy is first provided. A more detailed description ofprivacy settings and authentication will be addressed in connection withthe following Figures.

A Note on Data Privacy

Some embodiments described herein make use of training data or metricsthat may include information voluntarily provided by one or more users.In such embodiments, data privacy may be protected in a number of ways.

For example, the user may be required to opt in to any data collectionbefore user data is collected or used. The user may also be providedwith the opportunity to opt out of any data collection. Before opting into data collection, the user may be provided with a description of theways in which the data will be used, how long the data will be retained,and the safeguards that are in place to protect the data fromdisclosure.

Any information identifying the user from which the data was collectedmay be purged or disassociated from the data. In the event that anyidentifying information needs to be retained (e.g., to meet regulatoryrequirements), the user may be informed of the collection of theidentifying information, the uses that will be made of the identifyinginformation, and the amount of time that the identifying informationwill be retained. Information specifically identifying the user may beremoved and may be replaced with, for example, a generic identificationnumber or other non-specific form of identification.

Once collected, the data may be stored in a secure data storage locationthat includes safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to the data. Thedata may be stored in an encrypted format. Identifying informationand/or non-identifying information may be purged from the data storageafter a predetermined period of time.

Although particular privacy protection techniques are described hereinfor purposes of illustration, one of ordinary skill in the art willrecognize that privacy protected in other manners as well. Furtherdetails regarding data privacy are discussed below in the sectiondescribing network embodiments.

Assuming a user's privacy conditions are met, exemplary embodiments maybe deployed in a wide variety of messaging systems, including messagingin a social network or on a mobile device (e.g., through a messagingclient application or via short message service), among otherpossibilities. An overview of exemplary logic and processes for engagingin synchronous video conversation in a messaging system is next provided

Relevant Speaker Detection

Any or all of the above-described interfaces may be presented as part ofa set of procedures for facilitating video communications. FIG. 4 is aflowchart depicting an exemplary process 400 for selecting a relevantuser for display in a main window of a communications application.

At block 402, a system (such as a communication server) may receivevideo communication information pertaining to one or more participantsin a video communication. The video communication information may be inthe form of data packets containing audio and/or video information, suchas the exemplary data packet described below in connection with FIG. 5.

At block 404, the system may calculate one or more dominance scoresassociated with the video communication information received at block402. The dominance scores may represent a degree of confidence of thesystem that the user associated with the video communication informationis the current active or dominant speaker in the video communication.The confidence may be determined by tracking the average audio energy inthe user's communication feed over a period of time, and selecting theuser having the highest audio energy over that period of time.

In some embodiments, the system may attempt to accommodate noise in theuser's audio feed by reducing the level of audio energy by an amount ofestimated noise in the feed. For example, the system may determine anamount by which the present level of audio energy deviates from a recentaverage level of audio energy, and may assume that the average levelrepresents noise while the deviation amount represents active speech.

In some embodiments, if the candidate's current confidence level ishigh, but the confidence level is decreasing, the system may defer orrefrain from changing dominant speakers under the assumption that thespeaker will not be dominant in the near future.

In some embodiments, the system may weigh the dominance or confidencescores based on an amount of time that has elapsed since the currentdominant speaker was selected. This may prevent the system from rapidlychanging between dominant speakers.

In some embodiments, the system may account for brief breaks in thespeech of the dominant speaker by refraining from changing from onedominant speaker to another if the current dominant speaker's speechlevel is not sustained for a short predetermined period of time.

Once the dominance and/or confidence scores are calculated, at block 406the system may identify a current dominant speaker. For example, thevideo communication may be associated with a communication ID, and thesystem may maintain a table or other data structure having entriesassociated with each participant in the video call. The entries mayinclude fields to store an identifier for the participant, variablesrelating to a dominance score for the participant, variables relating toa relevance score for the user, etc. The variables relating to thedominance score (or the dominance/confidence score itself, if this valueis stored in the table) may be compared between the differentparticipants and the highest confidence score may be selected. The userhaving the highest confidence score may be identified as the dominantuser. In some embodiments, one or more rules may be applied to preventrapid or unnecessary switching between dominant users, as outlinedabove.

Exemplary pseudocode for calculating dominance scores and selecting adominant user is provided below. Although this pseudocode usesparticular values for variables (e.g., background noise in the last 15s, average audio level in 600 ms, etc.), these values are intended to beexemplary only. The present invention is not limited to the specificvalues described.

Pseudocode:

Input: Audio Energy Level from multiple user feeds. User feed isrepresented by encoded audio data sent to communication server every 30ms in the form of data packets. Each data packet includes a byteindicating the audio energy level ranging from 0 to 127 (e.g., asgenerated by the WebRTC audio processing pipeline). Higher values meanhigher energy level. Zero means the device mic is turned off.For each user feed, calculate the following stats that will be used toselect dominant speaker:

-   -   1. Background noise level average in last 15 s (“background_ma15        s”): Moving average of audio energy level for the last 15 s.        When the user is talking, the value tends to go up which makes        the value higher than the actual background noise level. To        compensate for that, modify the moving average slightly so the        calculated background noise level is less impacted by an active        talking user:        -   1. When a new value is added to the moving average, and if            the new value is bigger than previous value, modify the new            value to a smaller value:            new_value=previous_value+(new_value−previous_value+2)/3        -   2. When new value is smaller than previous value, new value            is not modified.    -   2. Audio level average in last 600 ms (“audio_ma600 ms”)    -   3. Noise deviation: audio level−audio ma600 ms    -   4. Noise deviation average in last 600 ms        (“noise_deviation_ma600 ms”)    -   5. Audio level average in last 3 s (“audio_ma3 s”)    -   6. Speech confidence level (“confidence”): audio_ma600        ms−background_ma15 s.    -   7. Max Confidence level in last 600 ms: the max value of        confidence level in last 600 ms (“confidence_600 ms”).        Dominant speaker Selection (algorithm is run every 300 ms, or if        dominant speaker changes from unmuted to muted):    -   1. Find the candidate with highest confidence_600 ms (Max        confidence level in last 600 ms)    -   2. If candidate is same as old dominant speaker, keep the        dominant speaker    -   3. Otherwise compare candidate with old dominant speaker:        -   1. If old dominant speaker is recently selected, the            candidate needs a higher confidence level for switch        -   2. The current dominant speaker has high confidence level in            last 3 s, but low confidence level now (6 db difference)            (audio_ma3 s−audio_ma600 ms>noise_deviation_ma600 ms+6),            don't switch. (The current dominant speaker is during speech            break, and may be back to talking mode soon).        -   3. If candidate's confidence level is going downwards            (audio_ma3 s>=audio_ma600 ms), don't switch.        -   4. If candidate's confidence level change is within its            noise range, require additional 3 db to select candidate.        -   5. Do the switch if candidate's confidence level is bigger            than current dominant speaker plus the additional dbs.

At block 408, the system may apply one or more relevancy metrics tocalculate relevancy scores. For example, if a media effect is applied toa particular user, that user's relevancy score may rise. Other relevancymetrics may also be applied (e.g., if it is determined through machinelearning or artificial intelligence that the current dominant speaker isspeaking about another participant, then in some conditions the otherparticipant that is the subject of the conversation may be more relevantto display than the dominant speaker). The relevancy score may becalculated based on, for example, a type of media effect, an amount oftime that the media effect is applied, contextual information, etc.

When media effects are applied to multiple different feedssimultaneously, the scores associated with each feed may be the same ormay differ. For example, if the same media effect is applied to eachuser, and there is nothing else to distinguish the users in this regard,the same score may be applied. If a different media effect is applied ateach user (e.g., a sender blows a kiss to a recipient, causing ananimation to be displayed on both the senders' and the recipients'feed), then the scores may differ. The amount of difference in thescores may depend on a type of the media effect.

At block 410, the system may identify a relevant participant, which maydiffer from the dominant speaker. The relevant participant may be theuser having the highest relevancy score. Instead of calculatingrelevancy scores, relevancy may be a binary condition (e.g., when amedia effect is applied, the affected user becomes the relevant userwithout the need to calculate a relevancy score).

At block 412, the system may determine whether to override the dominantspeaker. If the confidence score associated with the user's dominance isparticularly high (e.g., above a predetermined threshold or more than acertain proportional amount over the relevancy score), then dominancemay trump relevance and the dominant user may be selected for display.If the relevancy score is particularly high, then relevancy may trumpdominance. In some cases, a dominant user may be selected by default,and a relevant user may override the dominant user any time a certainevent occurs (e.g., the application of a media effect). In furtherembodiments, whether to override the dominant user with a relevant usermay be determined based on user preferences.

If the determination at block 412 is “NO” (i.e., the relevant usershould not override the dominant user), then processing may proceed toblock 414 and the dominant user may be selected for display. The servermay transmit information causing the dominant user to be displayed oneach of the displays not belonging to the dominant user. For example, anID associated with the dominant user and/or the dominant user's videofeed may be transmitted to each of the other users. For the dominantuser, the system may transmit the ID of the previous dominant orrelevant user, causing the dominant user to continue to display theprevious relevant/dominant user. Alternatively, the system may transmitthe dominant user ID to all participants; when the new dominant user'sdevice receives their own ID, the device may be configured to continueto display the previous dominant relevant user.

If the determination at block 412 is “YES” (i.e., the relevant usershould override the dominant user), then processing may proceed to block416 and the relevant user may be selected for display. The relevantuser's ID and/or video feed may be sent in a manner similar to thatdescribed for the dominant user in block 414.

FIG. 5 depicts an exemplary data structure suitable for use as a datapacket in exemplary embodiments such as the one described above. Oneexample of a suitable data packet is a Web Real Time Communications(WebRTC) packet.

The data packet may include a header 502 having a fixed or variablesize. The header 502 may include metadata pertaining to the data packet,such as a level of audio energy 504. The level of audio energy 504 maybe represented by a value, such as an integer between 0 and i (e.g.,i=2^(n)−1, where n is an integer relating to a size of i as representedin the header). The audio energy 504 may be used to determine whichspeaker is currently dominant, as described above in connection withFIG. 4.

The header 502 may optionally include a media effect flag and/or mediaeffect ID 506. The media effect ID 506 may indicate the presence of amedia effect applied to the video stream associated with the datapacket. If the media effect is applied at a server, the media effect ID506 may be used by the server to apply the media effect and then amodified video feed (including the media effect) may be sent to clientdevices for rendering in the video call. If the media effect is appliedlocally at a sender client device, the media effect may already berepresented in the content 508 of the data packet; the media effect ID506 may signal the presence and/or type of the media effect. If themedia effect is applied locally at recipient client devices, then aserver may send a raw video feed to the client devices along with themedia effect ID 506; the recipient devices may then apply the mediaeffect locally.

The media effect ID 506 may be used to determine relevancy, which mayoverride dominance as described above in connection with FIG. 4. In someembodiments, media effects may be added to video and/or audio contentthrough separate transmissions. For example, in some embodiments,information pertaining to media effects may be transmitted in a controlchannel separate from the audio and video data. In these cases, theserver may account for the media effect by considering the separatetransmissions when calculating a relevancy score related to the datapacket.

The data packet may also include content 508, which may include audioand/or video data associated with a user's video stream or feed. If thedata packet includes the audio energy field 504 in the header 502, thenit may not be necessary for the server to analyze the content 508 whendetermining dominance. In some embodiments, however, the server mayanalyze the content 508 (e.g., with machine learning or artificialintelligence algorithms) in order to better distinguish relevant audioenergy from irrelevant audio energy. For example, noise may be filteredout or not considered when determining dominance.

An example of information exchange according to one example is depictedin the data flow diagram of FIG. 6. A server may receive a first videocommunications packet 602 from a first participant's device and a secondvideo communications packet 604 from a second participant's device. Thefirst video communications packet 602 and the second videocommunications packet 604 may be data structures similar to the onedepicted in FIG. 5.

Upon receiving the communications packets, the server may determine thatthe first participant is the current dominant speaker, and that thereare no other relevant speakers to override the dominant speaker.Accordingly, the server sends the first participant ID 608 to the secondparticipant's device, and the second participant's devicecorrespondingly displays the first participant in the main window of acommunications interface.

In this example, the server also sends the ID 606 of the previousrelevant participant to the first participant's device, causing thefirst participant's device to continue display the previous relevantparticipant. In other embodiments, the server may send the firstparticipant ID 608 to the first participant's device, and the firstparticipant's device may interpret this as an instruction to continue todisplay the previous relevant participant. In further embodiments, theserver may send no information to the first participant at this stage,and the first participant may simply continue to display the previousrelevant participant in the absence of instructions to change theparticipant shown in the main window of the communications interface.

The first participant's device continues to send another communicationpacket 610 to the server, and similarly the second participant's devicesends a second communication packet 612. The server analyzes thesepackets and concludes that the first speaker remains the dominantspeaker, and that there are no other relevant speakers to override thedominant speaker. The server accordingly does not make any changes.Alternatively, the server could re-send relevant IDs to theparticipants.

A third participant's in the conversation then applies a media effect614 to the third participant's video stream, causing the server todetermine that the third participant is now a relevant participant. Themedia effect is applied for a media effect duration 616.

Even though the first participant remains the dominant speaker, theserver overrides the dominant speaker determination and sends the thirdparticipant ID 618 to the first participant and the second participant.The first participant and the second participant receive the ID 618 anddisplay the third participant in the main window of their respectivecommunication interfaces. Although not shown, the third participantwould continue to display the previous dominant/relevant participant(i.e., the first participant).

During the media effect duration 616, the third participant remains therelevant speaker. In this example, the server receives a first videocommunication packet 620 from the first participant and a second videocommunication packet 622 from the second participant. Analysis of thesepackets by server indicates that the second participant has now becomethe dominant speaker, superseding the first participant. However,because the third participant remains the relevant participant duringthe media effect duration 616, the server refrains from updating thefirst participant and the second participant with a newdominant/relevant speaker.

After the media effect duration 616 expires, the server now forwards thesecond participant ID 624 to the first participant, and the firstparticipant's device displays the second participant's vide feed in themain window. Because the second participant's device does not displayits own video feed in the main window, the second participant isprovided with the ID 626 of the previous dominnat/relevant participant(in this case, the third participant).

Video Chathead

The above-described relevant/dominant participant selection providesreassurance that the speaker displayed in the main window is the onethat the conversation participants most likely want to see at any givenmoment. This allows for reduced-size interfaces to be more effectivelydeployed, because the reduced screen real estate available is put tobetter use as compared to other techniques for selecting a speaker forthe main window. FIG. 7 is a flowchart depicting exemplary display logic700 for displaying a reduced-size interface on a touch-screen display.

At block 702, a system (e.g., a client device) may display a full-sizeinterface for a video communication. The full size interface may be aninterface such as the one depicted in FIG. 1A.

At block 704, the system may receive an instruction to display areduced-size interface. For example, the system may receive a selectionof a selectable element on the full-size interface, or may register agesture, an audio command, etc. indicating that the full-size interfaceshould be shrunk. Accordingly, at block 706 the system displays thereduced-size interface. In transitioning from the full-size interface tothe reduced-size interface, the system may display an animation thatcauses the full-size interface to reduce in size and smoothly transitionto the reduced-size interface. The reduced-size interface may be similarto the interface depicted in FIG. 3A.

At block 708, the system may display a relevant participant. Forexample, the system may receive an identifier of a relevant participantfrom a server, and may display the relevant participant in a main windowof the reduced-size interface. The relevant participant may be selectedby a method similar to the one depicted in FIG. 4.

At block 710, the system may register one or more haptic signals (or, asin the case of a non-touch interface, other types of signals indicatingan interaction or command). At block 712, the system may determinewhether the haptic signals were registered in an area of the screendedicated to the reduced-size interface. For example, the system maycompare an (x,y) location of the haptic signals to the boundaries of thereduced-size interface to determine whether the interaction occurred inan area bounded by the interface.

If the determination at block 712 is “YES” (i.e., the interaction wasinside the interface), then at block 714 the system may register theinteraction to the reduced-size interface of the video communicationapplication and may interpret the haptic signals as an instruction toperform an action with respect to the interface. For example, theinterface may be moved, resized, the call may be muted, etc. dependingon the particular interaction triggered.

If the determination at block 712 is “NO” (i.e., the interaction was notinside the interface), then at block 716 the system may register theinteraction to the other application (or the operating system) presentin the remainder of the display area. Processing may then return toblock 708 and relevant participant processing may be performed.

In some embodiments, certain gestures may be registered to thereduced-size interface, even though they occur partially or entirelyoutside the reduced-size interface.

Messaging System Overview

These examples may be implemented by a video communications system thatis provided locally, at a client device, or remotely (e.g., at a remoteserver), or some combination thereof. FIGS. 8A-8C depict variousexamples of communications systems, and are discussed in more detailbelow.

FIG. 8A depicts an exemplary centralized communications system 800,which facilitates video communications between two or more users. Thecentralized system 800 may implement some or all of the structure and/oroperations of a messaging service in a single computing entity, such asentirely within a single centralized server device 826.

The communications system 800 may include a computer-implemented systemhaving software applications that include one or more components.Although the messaging system 800 shown in FIG. 8A has a limited numberof elements in a certain topology, the messaging system 800 may includemore or fewer elements in alternate topologies.

A communications service 800 may be generally arranged to receive,store, and deliver video communications.

A client device 810 may transmit video communications addressed to oneor more recipient users, user accounts, or other identifiers resolvingto receiving client devices 810. In exemplary embodiments, each of theclient devices 810 and their respective clients 820 are associated witha particular user or users of the communications service 800. In someembodiments, the client devices 810 may be cellular devices such assmartphones and may be identified to the communications service 800based on a phone number associated with each of the client devices 810.In some embodiments, each client may be associated with a user accountregistered with the communications service 800. In general, each clientmay be addressed through various techniques for the reception of videocommunications. While in some embodiments the client devices 810 may becellular devices, in other embodiments one or more of the client devices810 may be personal computers, tablet devices, any other form ofcomputing device.

The client 810 may include one or more input devices 812 and one or moreoutput devices 818. The input devices 812 may include, for example,microphones, keyboards, cameras, electronic pens, touch screens, andother devices for receiving inputs including message data, requests,commands, user interface interactions, selections, and other types ofinput. The output devices 818 may include a speaker, a display devicesuch as a monitor or touch screen, and other devices for presenting aninterface to the communications system 800.

The client 810 may include a memory, which may be a non-transitorycomputer readable storage medium, such as one or a combination of a harddrive, solid state drive, flash storage, read only memory, or randomaccess memory. The memory may a representation of an input 814 and/or arepresentation of an output 816, as well as one or more applications.For example, the memory may store a messaging client 820 and/or a socialnetworking client that allows a user to interact with a socialnetworking service.

The input 814 may be textual, such as in the case where the input device812 is a keyboard. Alternatively, the input 814 may be an audio or videorecording, such as in the case where the input device 812 is amicrophone or camera.

The input 814 may be subjected to automatic speech recognition (ASR)logic in order to transform the audio recording to text that isprocessable by the messaging system 800. The ASR logic may be located atthe client device 810 (so that the audio recording is processed locallyby the client 810 and corresponding text is transmitted to thecommunications server 826), or may be located remotely at thecommunications server 826 (in which case, the audio recording may betransmitted to the communications server 826 and the communicationsserver 826 may process the audio into text). Other combinations are alsopossible—for example, if the input device 812 is a touch pad orelectronic pen, the input 814 may be in the form of handwriting, whichmay be subjected to handwriting or optical character recognitionanalysis logic in order to transform the input 812 into processabletext.

The client 810 may be provided with a network interface 822 forcommunicating with a network 824, such as the Internet. The networkinterface 822 may transmit the input 812 in a format and/or using aprotocol compatible with the network 824 and may receive a correspondingoutput 816 from the network 824.

The network interface 822 may communicate through the network 824 to amessaging server 826. The messaging server 826 may be operative toreceive, store, and forward messages between messaging clients.

The communications server 826 may include a network interface 822,communications preferences 828, and communications logic 830. Thecommunications preferences 828 may include one or more privacy settingsfor one or more users and/or video communications. For example, thecommunications preferences 828 may include one or more settings,including default settings, for the logic described herein.

The communications logic 830 may include relevant participant logic 832for identifying a dominant and/or relevant participant, as describedabove. The communications logic 830 may further include interface logic834 for displaying a reduced-size interface, as further described above(the interface logic 834 may also or alternatively be provided on theclients 810).

The network interface 822 of the client 810 and/or the communicationsserver 826 may also be used to communicate through the network 824 witha social networking server 836. The social networking server 836 mayinclude or may interact with a social networking graph 838 that definesconnections in a social network. Furthermore, the communications server826 may connect to the social networking server 836 for variouspurposes, such as retrieving connection information, messaging history,event details, etc. from the social network.

A user of the client 810 may be an individual (human user), an entity(e.g., an enterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group(e.g., of individuals or entities) that interacts or communicates withor over the social networking server 836. The social-networking server836 may be a network-addressable computing system hosting an onlinesocial network. The social networking server 836 may generate, store,receive, and send social-networking data, such as, for example,user-profile data, concept-profile data, social-graph information, orother suitable data related to the online social network. The socialnetworking server 836 may be accessed by the other components of thenetwork environment either directly or via the network 824.

The social networking server 836 may include an authorization server (orother suitable component(s)) that allows users to opt in to or opt outof having their actions logged by social-networking server 836 or sharedwith other systems (e.g., third-party systems, such as the messagingserver 826), for example, by setting appropriate privacy settings. Aprivacy setting of a user may determine what information associated withthe user may be logged, how information associated with the user may belogged, when information associated with the user may be logged, who maylog information associated with the user, whom information associatedwith the user may be shared with, and for what purposes informationassociated with the user may be logged or shared. Authorization serversmay be used to enforce one or more privacy settings of the users ofsocial-networking server 836 through blocking, data hashing,anonymization, or other suitable techniques as appropriate.

More specifically, one or more of the content objects of the onlinesocial network may be associated with a privacy setting. The privacysettings (or “access settings”) for an object may be stored in anysuitable manner, such as, for example, in association with the object,in an index on an authorization server, in another suitable manner, orany combination thereof. A privacy setting of an object may specify howthe object (or particular information associated with an object) can beaccessed (e.g., viewed or shared) using the online social network. Wherethe privacy settings for an object allow a particular user to accessthat object, the object may be described as being “visible” with respectto that user. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user of theonline social network may specify privacy settings for a user-profilepage identify a set of users that may access the work experienceinformation on the user-profile page, thus excluding other users fromaccessing the information. In particular embodiments, the privacysettings may specify a “blocked list” of users that should not beallowed to access certain information associated with the object. Inother words, the blocked list may specify one or more users or entitiesfor which an object is not visible. As an example and not by way oflimitation, a user may specify a set of users that may not access photosalbums associated with the user, thus excluding those users fromaccessing the photo albums (while also possibly allowing certain usersnot within the set of users to access the photo albums).

In particular embodiments, privacy settings may be associated withparticular elements of the social networking graph 838. Privacy settingsof a social-graph element, such as a node or an edge, may specify howthe social-graph element, information associated with the social-graphelement, or content objects associated with the social-graph element canbe accessed using the online social network. As an example and not byway of limitation, a particular concept node corresponding to aparticular photo may have a privacy setting specifying that the photomay only be accessed by users tagged in the photo and their friends. Inparticular embodiments, privacy settings may allow users to opt in oropt out of having their actions logged by social networking server 836or shared with other systems. In particular embodiments, the privacysettings associated with an object may specify any suitable granularityof permitted access or denial of access. As an example and not by way oflimitation, access or denial of access may be specified for particularusers (e.g., only me, my roommates, and my boss), users within aparticular degrees-of-separation (e.g., friends, or friends-of-friends),user groups (e.g., the gaming club, my family), user networks (e.g.,employees of particular employers, students or alumni of particularuniversity), all users (“public”), no users (“private”), users ofthird-party systems, particular applications (e.g., third-partyapplications, external websites), other suitable users or entities, orany combination thereof. Although this disclosure describes usingparticular privacy settings in a particular manner, this disclosurecontemplates using any suitable privacy settings in any suitable manner.

In response to a request from a user (or other entity) for a particularobject stored in a data store, the social networking server 836 may senda request to the data store for the object. The request may identify theuser associated with the request. The requested data object may only besent to the user (or a client system 810 of the user) if theauthorization server determines that the user is authorized to accessthe object based on the privacy settings associated with the object. Ifthe requesting user is not authorized to access the object, theauthorization server may prevent the requested object from beingretrieved from the data store, or may prevent the requested object frombe sent to the user. In the search query context, an object may only begenerated as a search result if the querying user is authorized toaccess the object. In other words, the object must have a visibilitythat is visible to the querying user. If the object has a visibilitythat is not visible to the user, the object may be excluded from thesearch results.

In some embodiments, targeting criteria may be used to identify users ofthe social network for various purposes. Targeting criteria used toidentify and target users may include explicit, stated user interests onsocial-networking server 836 or explicit connections of a user to anode, object, entity, brand, or page on social networking server 836. Inaddition, or as an alternative, such targeting criteria may includeimplicit or inferred user interests or connections (which may includeanalyzing a user's history, demographic, social or other activities,friends' social or other activities, subscriptions, or any of thepreceding of other users similar to the user (based, e.g., on sharedinterests, connections, or events)). Particular embodiments may utilizeplatform targeting, which may involve platform and “like” impressiondata; contextual signals (e.g., “Who is viewing now or has viewedrecently the page for COCA-COLA?”); light-weight connections (e.g.,“check-ins”); connection lookalikes; fans; extracted keywords; EMUadvertising; inferential advertising; coefficients, affinities, or othersocial-graph information; friends-of-friends connections; pinning orboosting; deals; polls; household income, social clusters or groups;products detected in images or other media; social- or open-graph edgetypes; geo-prediction; views of profile or pages; status updates orother user posts (analysis of which may involve natural-languageprocessing or keyword extraction); events information; or collaborativefiltering. Identifying and targeting users may also implicate privacysettings (such as user opt-outs), data hashing, or data anonymization,as appropriate.

The centralized embodiment depicted in FIG. 8A may be well-suited todeployment as a new system or as an upgrade to an existing system,because the logic is incorporated into the messaging server 826. Incontrast, FIG. 8B depicts an exemplary distributed messaging system 850,in which functionality for selecting dominant/relevant participants anddisplaying a reduced-size interface is distributed and remotelyaccessible from the messaging server. Examples of a distributed system850 include a client-server architecture, a 3-tier architecture, anN-tier architecture, a tightly-coupled or clustered architecture, apeer-to-peer architecture, a master-slave architecture, a shareddatabase architecture, and other types of distributed systems.

Many of the components depicted in FIG. 8B are identical to those inFIG. 8A, and a description of these elements is not repeated here forthe sake of brevity. The primary difference between the centralizedembodiment and the distributed embodiment is the addition of a separatecommunication server 852, which hosts the relevant participant logic 832and the interface logic 834. The communication server 852 may bedistinct from the communications server 826 but may communicate with thecommunications server 826, either directly or through the network 824,to provide the functionality of the interface logic 834 and the relevantparticipant logic 832 to the messaging server 826.

The embodiment depicted in FIG. 8B may be particularly well suited toallow exemplary embodiments to be deployed alongside existing messagingsystems, for example when it is difficult or undesirable to replace anexisting messaging server. Additionally, in some cases thecommunications server 826 may have limited resources (e.g. processing ormemory resources) that limit or preclude the addition of the additionalpivot functionality. In such situations, the capabilities describedherein may still be provided through the separate communications server852.

FIG. 8C illustrates an example of a social networking graph 838. Inexemplary embodiments, a social networking service may store one or moresocial graphs 838 in one or more data stores as a social graph datastructure via the social networking service.

The social graph 838 may include multiple nodes, such as user nodes 854and concept nodes 856. The social graph 838 may furthermore includeedges 858 connecting the nodes. The nodes and edges of social graph 838may be stored as data objects, for example, in a data store (such as asocial-graph database). Such a data store may include one or moresearchable or queryable indexes of nodes or edges of social graph 838.

The social graph 838 may be accessed by a social-networking server 826,client system 810, third-party system, or any other approved system ordevice for suitable applications.

A user node 854 may correspond to a user of the social-networkingsystem. A user may be an individual (human user), an entity (e.g., anenterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group (e.g., ofindividuals or entities) that interacts or communicates with or over thesocial-networking system. In exemplary embodiments, when a userregisters for an account with the social-networking system, thesocial-networking system may create a user node 854 corresponding to theuser, and store the user node 854 in one or more data stores. Users anduser nodes 854 described herein may, where appropriate, refer toregistered users and user nodes 854 associated with registered users. Inaddition or as an alternative, users and user nodes 854 described hereinmay, where appropriate, refer to users that have not registered with thesocial-networking system. In particular embodiments, a user node 854 maybe associated with information provided by a user or informationgathered by various systems, including the social-networking system. Asan example and not by way of limitation, a user may provide their name,profile picture, contact information, birth date, sex, marital status,family status, employment, education background, preferences, interests,or other demographic information. In particular embodiments, a user node854 may be associated with one or more data objects corresponding toinformation associated with a user. In particular embodiments, a usernode 854 may correspond to one or more webpages. A user node 854 may beassociated with a unique user identifier for the user in thesocial-networking system.

In particular embodiments, a concept node 856 may correspond to aconcept. As an example and not by way of limitation, a concept maycorrespond to a place (such as, for example, a movie theater,restaurant, landmark, or city); a website (such as, for example, awebsite associated with the social-network service or a third-partywebsite associated with a web-application server); an entity (such as,for example, a person, business, group, sports team, or celebrity); aresource (such as, for example, an audio file, video file, digitalphoto, text file, structured document, or application) which may belocated within the social-networking system or on an external server,such as a web-application server; real or intellectual property (suchas, for example, a sculpture, painting, movie, game, song, idea,photograph, or written work); a game; an activity; an idea or theory;another suitable concept; or two or more such concepts. A concept node556 may be associated with information of a concept provided by a useror information gathered by various systems, including thesocial-networking system. As an example and not by way of limitation,information of a concept may include a name or a title; one or moreimages (e.g., an image of the cover page of a book); a location (e.g.,an address or a geographical location); a website (which may beassociated with a URL); contact information (e.g., a phone number or anemail address); other suitable concept information; or any suitablecombination of such information. In particular embodiments, a conceptnode 856 may be associated with one or more data objects correspondingto information associated with concept node 856. In particularembodiments, a concept node 856 may correspond to one or more webpages.

In particular embodiments, a node in social graph 838 may represent orbe represented by a webpage (which may be referred to as a “profilepage”). Profile pages may be hosted by or accessible to thesocial-networking system. Profile pages may also be hosted onthird-party websites associated with a third-party server. As an exampleand not by way of limitation, a profile page corresponding to aparticular external webpage may be the particular external webpage andthe profile page may correspond to a particular concept node 856.Profile pages may be viewable by all or a selected subset of otherusers. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user node 854 mayhave a corresponding user-profile page in which the corresponding usermay add content, make declarations, or otherwise express himself orherself. A business page may comprise a user-profile page for a commerceentity. As another example and not by way of limitation, a concept node856 may have a corresponding concept-profile page in which one or moreusers may add content, make declarations, or express themselves,particularly in relation to the concept corresponding to concept node856.

In particular embodiments, a concept node 856 may represent athird-party webpage or resource hosted by a third-party system. Thethird-party webpage or resource may include, among other elements,content, a selectable or other icon, or other inter-actable object(which may be implemented, for example, in JavaScript, AJAX, or PHPcodes) representing an action or activity. As an example and not by wayof limitation, a third-party webpage may include a selectable icon suchas “like,” “check in,” “eat,” “recommend,” or another suitable action oractivity. A user viewing the third-party webpage may perform an actionby selecting one of the icons (e.g., “eat”), causing a client system tosend to the social-networking system a message indicating the user'saction. In response to the message, the social-networking system maycreate an edge (e.g., an “eat” edge) between a user node 854corresponding to the user and a concept node 856 corresponding to thethird-party webpage or resource and store edge 858 in one or more datastores.

In particular embodiments, a pair of nodes in social graph 838 may beconnected to each other by one or more edges 858. An edge 858 connectinga pair of nodes may represent a relationship between the pair of nodes.In particular embodiments, an edge 858 may include or represent one ormore data objects or attributes corresponding to the relationshipbetween a pair of nodes. As an example and not by way of limitation, afirst user may indicate that a second user is a “friend” of the firstuser. In response to this indication, the social-networking system maysend a “friend request” to the second user. If the second user confirmsthe “friend request,” the social-networking system may create an edge858 connecting the first user's user node 854 to the second user's usernode 854 in social graph 838 and store edge 858 as social-graphinformation in one or more data stores. In the example of FIG. 8C,social graph 838 includes an edge 858 indicating a friend relationbetween user nodes 854 of user “Amanda” and user “Dorothy.” Althoughthis disclosure describes or illustrates particular edges 858 withparticular attributes connecting particular user nodes 854, thisdisclosure contemplates any suitable edges 858 with any suitableattributes connecting user nodes 854. As an example and not by way oflimitation, an edge 858 may represent a friendship, family relationship,business or employment relationship, fan relationship, followerrelationship, visitor relationship, subscriber relationship,superior/subordinate relationship, reciprocal relationship,non-reciprocal relationship, another suitable type of relationship, ortwo or more such relationships. Moreover, although this disclosuregenerally describes nodes as being connected, this disclosure alsodescribes users or concepts as being connected. Herein, references tousers or concepts being connected may, where appropriate, refer to thenodes corresponding to those users or concepts being connected in socialgraph 838 by one or more edges 858.

In particular embodiments, an edge 858 between a user node 854 and aconcept node 856 may represent a particular action or activity performedby a user associated with user node 854 toward a concept associated witha concept node 856. As an example and not by way of limitation, asillustrated in FIG. 8C, a user may “like,” “attended,” “played,”“listened,” “cooked,” “worked at,” or “watched” a concept, each of whichmay correspond to an edge type or subtype. A concept-profile pagecorresponding to a concept node 856 may include, for example, aselectable “check in” icon (such as, for example, a clickable “check in”icon) or a selectable “add to favorites” icon. Similarly, after a userclicks these icons, the social-networking system may create a “favorite”edge or a “check in” edge in response to a user's action correspondingto a respective action. As another example and not by way of limitation,a user (user “Carla”) may listen to a particular song (“Across the Sea”)using a particular application (SPOTIFY, which is an online musicapplication). In this case, the social-networking system may create a“listened” edge 858 and a “used” edge (as illustrated in FIG. 8C)between user nodes 854 corresponding to the user and concept nodes 856corresponding to the song and application to indicate that the userlistened to the song and used the application. Moreover, thesocial-networking system may create a “played” edge 858 (as illustratedin FIG. 8C) between concept nodes 856 corresponding to the song and theapplication to indicate that the particular song was played by theparticular application. In this case, “played” edge 858 corresponds toan action performed by an external application (SPOTIFY) on an externalaudio file (the song “Across the Sea”). Although this disclosuredescribes particular edges 858 with particular attributes connectinguser nodes 854 and concept nodes 856, this disclosure contemplates anysuitable edges 858 with any suitable attributes connecting user nodes854 and concept nodes 856. Moreover, although this disclosure describesedges between a user node 854 and a concept node 856 representing asingle relationship, this disclosure contemplates edges between a usernode 854 and a concept node 856 representing one or more relationships.As an example and not by way of limitation, an edge 858 may representboth that a user likes and has used at a particular concept.Alternatively, another edge 858 may represent each type of relationship(or multiples of a single relationship) between a user node 854 and aconcept node 856 (as illustrated in FIG. 8C between user node 854 foruser “Edwin” and concept node 856 for “SPOTIFY”).

In particular embodiments, the social-networking system may create anedge 858 between a user node 854 and a concept node 856 in social graph838. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user viewing aconcept-profile page (such as, for example, by using a web browser or aspecial-purpose application hosted by the user's client system) mayindicate that he or she likes the concept represented by the conceptnode 856 by clicking or selecting a “Like” icon, which may cause theuser's client system to send to the social-networking system a messageindicating the user's liking of the concept associated with theconcept-profile page. In response to the message, the social-networkingsystem may create an edge 858 between user node 854 associated with theuser and concept node 856, as illustrated by “like” edge 858 between theuser and concept node 856. In particular embodiments, thesocial-networking system may store an edge 858 in one or more datastores. In particular embodiments, an edge 858 may be automaticallyformed by the social-networking system in response to a particular useraction. As an example and not by way of limitation, if a first useruploads a picture, watches a movie, or listens to a song, an edge 858may be formed between user node 854 corresponding to the first user andconcept nodes 856 corresponding to those concepts. Although thisdisclosure describes forming particular edges 858 in particular manners,this disclosure contemplates forming any suitable edges 858 in anysuitable manner.

The social graph 838 may further comprise a plurality of product nodes.Product nodes may represent particular products that may be associatedwith a particular business. A business may provide a product catalog toa consumer-to-business service and the consumer-to-business service maytherefore represent each of the products within the product in thesocial graph 838 with each product being in a distinct product node. Aproduct node may comprise information relating to the product, such aspricing information, descriptive information, manufacturer information,availability information, and other relevant information. For example,each of the items on a menu for a restaurant may be represented withinthe social graph 838 with a product node describing each of the items. Aproduct node may be linked by an edge to the business providing theproduct. Where multiple businesses provide a product, each business mayhave a distinct product node associated with its providing of theproduct or may each link to the same product node. A product node may belinked by an edge to each user that has purchased, rated, owns,recommended, or viewed the product, with the edge describing the natureof the relationship (e.g., purchased, rated, owns, recommended, viewed,or other relationship). Each of the product nodes may be associated witha graph id and an associated merchant id by virtue of the linkedmerchant business. Products available from a business may therefore becommunicated to a user by retrieving the available product nodes linkedto the user node for the business within the social graph 838. Theinformation for a product node may be manipulated by thesocial-networking system as a product object that encapsulatesinformation regarding the referenced product.

As such, the social graph 838 may be used to infer shared interests,shared experiences, or other shared or common attributes of two or moreusers of a social-networking system. For instance, two or more userseach having an edge to a common business, product, media item,institution, or other entity represented in the social graph 838 mayindicate a shared relationship with that entity, which may be used tosuggest customization of a use of a social-networking system, includinga messaging system, for one or more users.

The embodiments described above may be performed by a messagingarchitecture, an example of which is next described with reference toFIG. 9.

Messaging Architecture

FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of a plurality of servers implementingvarious functions of a messaging service 900. It will be appreciatedthat different distributions of work and functions may be used invarious embodiments of a messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise a domain name front end 902. Thedomain name front end 902 may be assigned one or more domain namesassociated with the messaging service 900 in a domain name system (DNS).The domain name front end 902 may receive incoming connections anddistribute the connections to servers providing various messagingservices.

The messaging service 902 may comprise one or more chat servers 904. Thechat servers 904 may comprise front-end servers for receiving andtransmitting user-to-user messaging updates such as chat messages.Incoming connections may be assigned to the chat servers 904 by thedomain name front end 902 based on workload balancing.

The messaging service 900 may comprise backend servers 908. The backendservers 908 may perform specialized tasks in the support of the chatoperations of the front-end chat servers 904. A plurality of differenttypes of backend servers 908 may be used. It will be appreciated thatthe assignment of types of tasks to different backend serves 908 mayvary in different embodiments. In some embodiments some of the back-endservices provided by dedicated servers may be combined onto a singleserver or a set of servers each performing multiple tasks dividedbetween different servers in the embodiment described herein. Similarly,in some embodiments tasks of some of dedicated back-end serversdescribed herein may be divided between different servers of differentserver groups.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more offline storageservers 910. The one or more offline storage servers 910 may storemessaging content for currently-offline messaging clients in hold forwhen the messaging clients reconnect.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more sessions servers 912.The one or more session servers 912 may maintain session state ofconnected messaging clients.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more presence servers 914.The one or more presence servers 914 may maintain presence informationfor the messaging service 900. Presence information may correspond touser-specific information indicating whether or not a given user has anonline messaging client and is available for chatting, has an onlinemessaging client but is currently away from it, does not have an onlinemessaging client, and any other presence state.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more push storage servers916. The one or more push storage servers 916 may cache push requestsand transmit the push requests to messaging clients. Push requests maybe used to wake messaging clients, to notify messaging clients that amessaging update is available, and to otherwise performserver-side-driven interactions with messaging clients.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more group servers 918.The one or more group servers 918 may maintain lists of groups, addusers to groups, remove users from groups, and perform the reception,caching, and forwarding of group chat messages.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more block list servers920. The one or more block list servers 920 may maintain user-specificblock lists, the user-specific incoming-block lists indicating for eachuser the one or more other users that are forbidden from transmittingmessages to that user. Alternatively or additionally, the one or moreblock list servers 920 may maintain user-specific outgoing-block listsindicating for each user the one or more other users that that user isforbidden from transmitting messages to. It will be appreciated thatincoming-block lists and outgoing-block lists may be stored incombination in, for example, a database, with the incoming-block listsand outgoing-block lists representing different views of a samerepository of block information.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more last seen informationservers 922. The one or more last seen information servers 922 mayreceive, store, and maintain information indicating the last seenlocation, status, messaging client, and other elements of a user's lastseen connection to the messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more key servers 924. Theone or more key servers may host public keys for public/private keyencrypted communication.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more profile photo servers926. The one or more profile photo servers 926 may store and makeavailable for retrieval profile photos for the plurality of users of themessaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more spam logging servers928. The one or more spam logging servers 928 may log known andsuspected spam (e.g., unwanted messages, particularly those of apromotional nature). The one or more spam logging servers 928 may beoperative to analyze messages to determine whether they are spam and toperform punitive measures, in some embodiments, against suspectedspammers (users that send spam messages).

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more statistics servers930. The one or more statistics servers may compile and store statisticsinformation related to the operation of the messaging service 900 andthe behavior of the users of the messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more web servers 932. Theone or more web servers 932 may engage in hypertext transport protocol(HTTP) and hypertext transport protocol secure (HTTPS) connections withweb browsers.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more chat activitymonitoring servers 934. The one or more chat activity monitoring servers934 may monitor the chats of users to determine unauthorized ordiscouraged behavior by the users of the messaging service 900. The oneor more chat activity monitoring servers 934 may work in cooperationwith the spam logging servers 928 and block list servers 920, with theone or more chat activity monitoring servers 934 identifying spam orother discouraged behavior and providing spam information to the spamlogging servers 928 and blocking information, where appropriate to theblock list servers 920.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more sync servers 936. Theone or more sync servers 936 may sync the messaging system 500 withcontact information from a messaging client, such as an address book ona mobile phone, to determine contacts for a user in the messagingservice 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more multimedia servers938. The one or more multimedia servers may store multimedia (e.g.,images, video, audio) in transit between messaging clients, multimediacached for offline endpoints, and may perform transcoding of multimedia.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more payment servers 940.The one or more payment servers 940 may process payments from users. Theone or more payment servers 940 may connect to external third-partyservers for the performance of payments.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more registration servers942. The one or more registration servers 942 may register new users ofthe messaging service 900.

The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more voice relay servers944. The one or more voice relay servers 944 may relayvoice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) voice communication betweenmessaging clients for the performance of VoIP calls.

The above-described methods may be embodied as instructions on acomputer readable medium or as part of a computing architecture. FIG. 10illustrates an embodiment of an exemplary computing architecture 1000suitable for implementing various embodiments as previously described.In one embodiment, the computing architecture 1000 may comprise or beimplemented as part of an electronic device, such as a computer 1001.The embodiments are not limited in this context.

As used in this application, the terms “system” and “component” areintended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, acombination of hardware and software, software, or software inexecution, examples of which are provided by the exemplary computingarchitecture 1000. For example, a component can be, but is not limitedto being, a process running on a processor, a processor, a hard diskdrive, multiple storage drives (of optical and/or magnetic storagemedium), an object, an executable, a thread of execution, a program,and/or a computer. By way of illustration, both an application runningon a server and the server can be a component. One or more componentscan reside within a process and/or thread of execution, and a componentcan be localized on one computer and/or distributed between two or morecomputers. Further, components may be communicatively coupled to eachother by various types of communications media to coordinate operations.The coordination may involve the uni-directional or bi-directionalexchange of information. For instance, the components may communicateinformation in the form of signals communicated over the communicationsmedia. The information can be implemented as signals allocated tovarious signal lines. In such allocations, each message is a signal.Further embodiments, however, may alternatively employ data messages.Such data messages may be sent across various connections. Exemplaryconnections include parallel interfaces, serial interfaces, and businterfaces.

The computing architecture 1000 includes various common computingelements, such as one or more processors, multi-core processors,co-processors, memory units, chipsets, controllers, peripherals,interfaces, oscillators, timing devices, video cards, audio cards,multimedia input/output (I/O) components, power supplies, and so forth.The embodiments, however, are not limited to implementation by thecomputing architecture 1000.

As shown in FIG. 10, the computing architecture 1000 comprises aprocessing unit 1002, a system memory 1004 and a system bus 1006. Theprocessing unit 1002 can be any of various commercially availableprocessors, including without limitation an AMD® Athlon®, Duron® andOpteron® processors; ARM® application, embedded and secure processors;IBM® and Motorola® DragonBall® and PowerPC® processors; IBM and Sony®Cell processors; Intel® Celeron®, Core (2) Duo®, Itanium®, Pentium®,Xeon®, and XScale® processors; and similar processors. Dualmicroprocessors, multi-core processors, and other multi-processorarchitectures may also be employed as the processing unit 1002.

The system bus 1006 provides an interface for system componentsincluding, but not limited to, the system memory 1004 to the processingunit 1002. The system bus 1006 can be any of several types of busstructure that may further interconnect to a memory bus (with or withouta memory controller), a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of avariety of commercially available bus architectures. Interface adaptersmay connect to the system bus 1006 via a slot architecture. Example slotarchitectures may include without limitation Accelerated Graphics Port(AGP), Card Bus, (Extended) Industry Standard Architecture ((E)ISA),Micro Channel Architecture (MCA), NuBus, Peripheral ComponentInterconnect (Extended) (PCI(X)), PCI Express, Personal Computer MemoryCard International Association (PCMCIA), and the like.

The computing architecture 1000 may comprise or implement variousarticles of manufacture. An article of manufacture may comprise acomputer-readable storage medium to store logic. Examples of acomputer-readable storage medium may include any tangible media capableof storing electronic data, including volatile memory or non-volatilememory, removable or non-removable memory, erasable or non-erasablememory, writeable or re-writeable memory, and so forth. Examples oflogic may include executable computer program instructions implementedusing any suitable type of code, such as source code, compiled code,interpreted code, executable code, static code, dynamic code,object-oriented code, visual code, and the like. Embodiments may also beat least partly implemented as instructions contained in or on anon-transitory computer-readable medium, which may be read and executedby one or more processors to enable performance of the operationsdescribed herein.

The system memory 1004 may include various types of computer-readablestorage media in the form of one or more higher speed memory units, suchas read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM(DRAM), Double-Data-Rate DRAM (DDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), staticRAM (SRAM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM),electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory, polymermemory such as ferroelectric polymer memory, ovonic memory, phase changeor ferroelectric memory, silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS)memory, magnetic or optical cards, an array of devices such as RedundantArray of Independent Disks (RAID) drives, solid state memory devices(e.g., USB memory, solid state drives (SSD) and any other type ofstorage media suitable for storing information. In the illustratedembodiment shown in FIG. 10, the system memory 1004 can includenon-volatile memory 1008 and/or volatile memory 1010. A basicinput/output system (BIOS) can be stored in the non-volatile memory1008.

The computing architecture 1000 may include various types ofcomputer-readable storage media in the form of one or more lower speedmemory units, including an internal (or external) hard disk drive (HDD)1012, a magnetic floppy disk drive (FDD) 1014 to read from or write to aremovable magnetic disk 1016, and an optical disk drive 1018 to readfrom or write to a removable optical disk 1020 (e.g., a CD-ROM or DVD).The HDD 1012, FDD 1014 and optical disk drive 1020 can be connected tothe system bus 1006 by an HDD interface 1022, an FDD interface 1024 andan optical drive interface 1026, respectively. The HDD interface 1022for external drive implementations can include at least one or both ofUniversal Serial Bus (USB) and IEEE 694 interface technologies.

The drives and associated computer-readable media provide volatileand/or nonvolatile storage of data, data structures, computer-executableinstructions, and so forth. For example, a number of program modules canbe stored in the drives and memory units 1008, 1012, including anoperating system 1028, one or more application programs 1030, otherprogram modules 1032, and program data 1034. In one embodiment, the oneor more application programs 1030, other program modules 1032, andprogram data 1034 can include, for example, the various applicationsand/or components of the messaging system 500.

A user can enter commands and information into the computer 1001 throughone or more wire/wireless input devices, for example, a keyboard 1036and a pointing device, such as a mouse 1038. Other input devices mayinclude microphones, infra-red (IR) remote controls, radio-frequency(RF) remote controls, game pads, stylus pens, card readers, dongles,finger print readers, gloves, graphics tablets, joysticks, keyboards,retina readers, touch screens (e.g., capacitive, resistive, etc.),trackballs, trackpads, sensors, styluses, and the like. These and otherinput devices are often connected to the processing unit 1002 through aninput device interface 1040 that is coupled to the system bus 1006, butcan be connected by other interfaces such as a parallel port, IEEE 694serial port, a game port, a USB port, an IR interface, and so forth.

A monitor 1042 or other type of display device is also connected to thesystem bus 1006 via an interface, such as a video adaptor 1044. Themonitor 1042 may be internal or external to the computer 1001. Inaddition to the monitor 1042, a computer typically includes otherperipheral output devices, such as speakers, printers, and so forth.

The computer 1001 may operate in a networked environment using logicalconnections via wire and/or wireless communications to one or moreremote computers, such as a remote computer 1044. The remote computer1044 can be a workstation, a server computer, a router, a personalcomputer, portable computer, microprocessor-based entertainmentappliance, a peer device or other common network node, and typicallyincludes many or all of the elements described relative to the computer1001, although, for purposes of brevity, only a memory/storage device1046 is illustrated. The logical connections depicted includewire/wireless connectivity to a local area network (LAN) 1048 and/orlarger networks, for example, a wide area network (WAN) 1050. Such LANand WAN networking environments are commonplace in offices andcompanies, and facilitate enterprise-wide computer networks, such asintranets, all of which may connect to a global communications network,for example, the Internet.

When used in a LAN networking environment, the computer 1001 isconnected to the LAN 1048 through a wire and/or wireless communicationnetwork interface or adaptor 1052. The adaptor 1052 can facilitate wireand/or wireless communications to the LAN 1048, which may also include awireless access point disposed thereon for communicating with thewireless functionality of the adaptor 1052.

When used in a WAN networking environment, the computer 1001 can includea modem 1054, or is connected to a communications server on the WAN1050, or has other means for establishing communications over the WAN1050, such as by way of the Internet. The modem 1054, which can beinternal or external and a wire and/or wireless device, connects to thesystem bus 1006 via the input device interface 1040. In a networkedenvironment, program modules depicted relative to the computer 1001, orportions thereof, can be stored in the remote memory/storage device1046. It will be appreciated that the network connections shown areexemplary and other means of establishing a communications link betweenthe computers can be used.

The computer 1001 is operable to communicate with wire and wirelessdevices or entities using the IEEE 802 family of standards, such aswireless devices operatively disposed in wireless communication (e.g.,IEEE 802.13 over-the-air modulation techniques). This includes at leastWi-Fi (or Wireless Fidelity), WiMax, and Bluetooth™ wirelesstechnologies, among others. Thus, the communication can be a predefinedstructure as with a conventional network or simply an ad hoccommunication between at least two devices. Wi-Fi networks use radiotechnologies called IEEE 802.13x (a, b, g, n, etc.) to provide secure,reliable, fast wireless connectivity. A Wi-Fi network can be used toconnect computers to each other, to the Internet, and to wire networks(which use IEEE 802.3-related media and functions).

FIG. 11 is a block diagram depicting an exemplary communicationsarchitecture 1100 suitable for implementing various embodiments aspreviously described. The communications architecture 1100 includesvarious common communications elements, such as a transmitter, receiver,transceiver, radio, network interface, baseband processor, antenna,amplifiers, filters, power supplies, and so forth. The embodiments,however, are not limited to implementation by the communicationsarchitecture 1100.

As shown in FIG. 11, the communications architecture 1100 includes oneor more clients 1102 and servers 1104. The clients 1102 may implementthe client device 510. The servers 1104 may implement the server device526. The clients 1102 and the servers 1104 are operatively connected toone or more respective client data stores 1106 and server data stores1108 that can be employed to store information local to the respectiveclients 1102 and servers 1104, such as cookies and/or associatedcontextual information.

The clients 1102 and the servers 1104 may communicate informationbetween each other using a communication framework 1110. Thecommunications framework 1110 may implement any well-knowncommunications techniques and protocols. The communications framework1110 may be implemented as a packet-switched network (e.g., publicnetworks such as the Internet, private networks such as an enterpriseintranet, and so forth), a circuit-switched network (e.g., the publicswitched telephone network), or a combination of a packet-switchednetwork and a circuit-switched network (with suitable gateways andtranslators).

The communications framework 1110 may implement various networkinterfaces arranged to accept, communicate, and connect to acommunications network. A network interface may be regarded as aspecialized form of an input output interface. Network interfaces mayemploy connection protocols including without limitation direct connect,Ethernet (e.g., thick, thin, twisted pair 10/100/1000 Base T, and thelike), token ring, wireless network interfaces, cellular networkinterfaces, IEEE 802.11a-x network interfaces, IEEE 802.16 networkinterfaces, IEEE 802.20 network interfaces, and the like. Further,multiple network interfaces may be used to engage with variouscommunications network types. For example, multiple network interfacesmay be employed to allow for the communication over broadcast,multicast, and unicast networks. Should processing requirements dictatea greater amount speed and capacity, distributed network controllerarchitectures may similarly be employed to pool, load balance, andotherwise increase the communicative bandwidth required by clients 1102and the servers 1104. A communications network may be any one and thecombination of wired and/or wireless networks including withoutlimitation a direct interconnection, a secured custom connection, aprivate network (e.g., an enterprise intranet), a public network (e.g.,the Internet), a Personal Area Network (PAN), a Local Area Network(LAN), a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), an Operating Missions as Nodeson the Internet (OMNI), a Wide Area Network (WAN), a wireless network, acellular network, and other communications networks.

FIG. 12 illustrates an embodiment of a device 1200 for use in amulticarrier OFDM system, such as the messaging system 500. The device1200 may implement, for example, software components 1202 as describedwith reference to the messaging component logic 600, the intentdetermination logic 700, and the group selection logic 800. The device1200 may also implement a logic circuit 1204. The logic circuit 1204 mayinclude physical circuits to perform operations described for themessaging system 500. As shown in FIG. 12, device 1200 may include aradio interface 1206, baseband circuitry 1208, and a computing platform1210, although embodiments are not limited to this configuration.

The device 1200 may implement some or all of the structure and/oroperations for the messaging system 500 and/or logic circuit 1204 in asingle computing entity, such as entirely within a single device.Alternatively, the device 1200 may distribute portions of the structureand/or operations for the messaging system 500 and/or logic circuit 1204across multiple computing entities using a distributed systemarchitecture, such as a client-server architecture, a 3-tierarchitecture, an N-tier architecture, a tightly-coupled or clusteredarchitecture, a peer-to-peer architecture, a master-slave architecture,a shared database architecture, and other types of distributed systems.The embodiments are not limited in this context.

In one embodiment, the radio interface 1206 may include a component orcombination of components adapted for transmitting and/or receivingsingle carrier or multi-carrier modulated signals (e.g., includingcomplementary code keying (CCK) and/or orthogonal frequency divisionmultiplexing (OFDM) symbols) although the embodiments are not limited toany specific over-the-air interface or modulation scheme. The radiointerface 1206 may include, for example, a receiver 1212, a transmitter1214 and/or a frequency synthesizer 1216. The radio interface 1206 mayinclude bias controls, a crystal oscillator and/or one or more antennas1218. In another embodiment, the radio interface 1206 may use externalvoltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), surface acoustic wave filters,intermediate frequency (IF) filters and/or RF filters, as desired. Dueto the variety of potential RF interface designs an expansivedescription thereof is omitted.

The baseband circuitry 1208 may communicate with the radio interface1206 to process receive and/or transmit signals and may include, forexample, an analog-to-digital converter 1220 for down convertingreceived signals, and a digital-to-analog converter 1222 forup-converting signals for transmission. Further, the baseband circuitry1208 may include a baseband or physical layer (PHY) processing circuit1224 for PHY link layer processing of respective receive/transmitsignals. The baseband circuitry 1208 may include, for example, aprocessing circuit 1226 for medium access control (MAC)/data link layerprocessing. The baseband circuitry 1208 may include a memory controller1228 for communicating with the processing circuit 1226 and/or acomputing platform 1210, for example, via one or more interfaces 1230.

In some embodiments, the PHY processing circuit 1224 may include a frameconstruction and/or detection module, in combination with additionalcircuitry such as a buffer memory, to construct and/or deconstructcommunication frames, such as radio frames. Alternatively or inaddition, the MAC processing circuit 1226 may share processing forcertain of these functions or perform these processes independent of thePHY processing circuit 1224. In some embodiments, MAC and PHY processingmay be integrated into a single circuit.

The computing platform 1210 may provide computing functionality for thedevice 1200. As shown, the computing platform 1210 may include aprocessing component 1232. In addition to, or alternatively of, thebaseband circuitry 1208, the device 1200 may execute processingoperations or logic for the messaging system 500 and logic circuit 1204using the processing component 1232. The processing component 1232(and/or the PHY 1224 and/or MAC 1226) may comprise various hardwareelements, software elements, or a combination of both. Examples ofhardware elements may include devices, logic devices, components,processors, microprocessors, circuits, processor circuits, circuitelements (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and soforth), integrated circuits, application specific integrated circuits(ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors(DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), memory units, logic gates,registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, and soforth. Examples of software elements may include software components,programs, applications, computer programs, application programs, systemprograms, software development programs, machine programs, operatingsystem software, middleware, firmware, software modules, routines,subroutines, functions, methods, procedures, software interfaces,application program interfaces (API), instruction sets, computing code,computer code, code segments, computer code segments, words, values,symbols, or any combination thereof. Determining whether an embodimentis implemented using hardware elements and/or software elements may varyin accordance with any number of factors, such as desired computationalrate, power levels, heat tolerances, processing cycle budget, input datarates, output data rates, memory resources, data bus speeds and otherdesign or performance constraints, as desired for a givenimplementation.

The computing platform 1210 may further include other platformcomponents 1234. Other platform components 1234 include common computingelements, such as one or more processors, multi-core processors,co-processors, memory units, chipsets, controllers, peripherals,interfaces, oscillators, timing devices, video cards, audio cards,multimedia input/output (I/O) components (e.g., digital displays), powersupplies, and so forth. Examples of memory units may include withoutlimitation various types of computer readable and machine readablestorage media in the form of one or more higher speed memory units, suchas read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM(DRAM), Double-Data-Rate DRAM (DDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), staticRAM (SRAM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM),electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory, polymermemory such as ferroelectric polymer memory, ovonic memory, phase changeor ferroelectric memory, silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS)memory, magnetic or optical cards, an array of devices such as RedundantArray of Independent Disks (RAID) drives, solid state memory devices(e.g., USB memory, solid state drives (SSD) and any other type ofstorage media suitable for storing information.

The device 1200 may be, for example, an ultra-mobile device, a mobiledevice, a fixed device, a machine-to-machine (M2M) device, a personaldigital assistant (PDA), a mobile computing device, a smart phone, atelephone, a digital telephone, a cellular telephone, user equipment,eBook readers, a handset, a one-way pager, a two-way pager, a messagingdevice, a computer, a personal computer (PC), a desktop computer, alaptop computer, a notebook computer, a netbook computer, a handheldcomputer, a tablet computer, a server, a server array or server farm, aweb server, a network server, an Internet server, a work station, amini-computer, a main frame computer, a supercomputer, a networkappliance, a web appliance, a distributed computing system,multiprocessor systems, processor-based systems, consumer electronics,programmable consumer electronics, game devices, television, digitaltelevision, set top box, wireless access point, base station, node B,evolved node B (eNB), subscriber station, mobile subscriber center,radio network controller, router, hub, gateway, bridge, switch, machine,or combination thereof. Accordingly, functions and/or specificconfigurations of the device 1200 described herein, may be included oromitted in various embodiments of the device 1200, as suitably desired.In some embodiments, the device 1200 may be configured to be compatiblewith protocols and frequencies associated one or more of the 3GPP LTESpecifications and/or IEEE 1402.16 Standards for WMANs, and/or otherbroadband wireless networks, cited herein, although the embodiments arenot limited in this respect.

Embodiments of device 1200 may be implemented using single input singleoutput (SISO) architectures. However, certain implementations mayinclude multiple antennas (e.g., antennas 1218) for transmission and/orreception using adaptive antenna techniques for beamforming or spatialdivision multiple access (SDMA) and/or using MIMO communicationtechniques.

The components and features of the device 1200 may be implemented usingany combination of discrete circuitry, application specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), logic gates and/or single chip architectures. Further,the features of the device 1200 may be implemented usingmicrocontrollers, programmable logic arrays and/or microprocessors orany combination of the foregoing where suitably appropriate. It is notedthat hardware, firmware and/or software elements may be collectively orindividually referred to herein as “logic” or “circuit.”

It will be appreciated that the exemplary device 1200 shown in the blockdiagram of FIG. 12 may represent one functionally descriptive example ofmany potential implementations. Accordingly, division, omission orinclusion of block functions depicted in the accompanying figures doesnot infer that the hardware components, circuits, software and/orelements for implementing these functions would be necessarily bedivided, omitted, or included in embodiments.

At least one computer-readable storage medium 1236 may includeinstructions that, when executed, cause a system to perform any of thecomputer-implemented methods described herein.

General Notes on Terminology

Some embodiments may be described using the expression “one embodiment”or “an embodiment” along with their derivatives. These terms mean that aparticular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connectionwith the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment. Theappearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in thespecification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.Moreover, unless otherwise noted the features described above arerecognized to be usable together in any combination. Thus, any featuresdiscussed separately may be employed in combination with each otherunless it is noted that the features are incompatible with each other.

With general reference to notations and nomenclature used herein, thedetailed descriptions herein may be presented in terms of programprocedures executed on a computer or network of computers. Theseprocedural descriptions and representations are used by those skilled inthe art to most effectively convey the substance of their work to othersskilled in the art.

A procedure is here, and generally, conceived to be a self-consistentsequence of operations leading to a desired result. These operations arethose requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually,though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical,magnetic or optical signals capable of being stored, transferred,combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It proves convenient attimes, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to thesesignals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers,or the like. It should be noted, however, that all of these and similarterms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities andare merely convenient labels applied to those quantities.

Further, the manipulations performed are often referred to in terms,such as adding or comparing, which are commonly associated with mentaloperations performed by a human operator. No such capability of a humanoperator is necessary, or desirable in most cases, in any of theoperations described herein, which form part of one or more embodiments.Rather, the operations are machine operations. Useful machines forperforming operations of various embodiments include general purposedigital computers or similar devices.

Some embodiments may be described using the expression “coupled” and“connected” along with their derivatives. These terms are notnecessarily intended as synonyms for each other. For example, someembodiments may be described using the terms “connected” and/or“coupled” to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physicalor electrical contact with each other. The term “coupled,” however, mayalso mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with eachother, but yet still co-operate or interact with each other.

Various embodiments also relate to apparatus or systems for performingthese operations. This apparatus may be specially constructed for therequired purpose or it may comprise a general purpose computer asselectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored inthe computer. The procedures presented herein are not inherently relatedto a particular computer or other apparatus. Various general purposemachines may be used with programs written in accordance with theteachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct morespecialized apparatus to perform the required method steps. The requiredstructure for a variety of these machines will appear from thedescription given.

It is emphasized that the Abstract of the Disclosure is provided toallow a reader to quickly ascertain the nature of the technicaldisclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not beused to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. Inaddition, in the foregoing Detailed Description, it can be seen thatvarious features are grouped together in a single embodiment for thepurpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is notto be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimedembodiments require more features than are expressly recited in eachclaim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive subject matterlies in less than all features of a single disclosed embodiment. Thusthe following claims are hereby incorporated into the DetailedDescription, with each claim standing on its own as a separateembodiment. In the appended claims, the terms “including” and “in which”are used as the plain-English equivalents of the respective terms“comprising” and “wherein,” respectively. Moreover, the terms “first,”“second,” “third,” and so forth, are used merely as labels, and are notintended to impose numerical requirements on their objects.

What has been described above includes examples of the disclosedarchitecture. It is, of course, not possible to describe everyconceivable combination of components and/or methodologies, but one ofordinary skill in the art may recognize that many further combinationsand permutations are possible. Accordingly, the novel architecture isintended to embrace all such alterations, modifications and variationsthat fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A method, comprising: receiving, at adevice facilitating a video conversation between a plurality ofparticipants, information pertaining to a video communication from eachof the plurality of participants; identifying one of the participants asa dominant participant based on comparing a confidence score calculatedfor each participant based on the received information; calculating arelevancy metric for each of the participants; and overriding theidentified dominant participant when the relevancy metric for anotherparticipant exceeds the confidence score for the identified dominantparticipant by a predetermined amount.
 2. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising: displaying, at the device, a user interface for a videoconversation, the user interface comprising a main window and one ormore secondary windows; displaying the dominant participant in the mainwindow of the user interface and other participants in the one or moresecondary windows of the user interface; and displaying another one ofthe participants in the main window of the user interface of the currentdominant participant.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating therelevancy metric comprises determining that one of the participants isassociated with a media effect.
 4. The method of claim 1, wherein theinformation pertaining to the video communication from each participantcomprises data packets having headers indicating levels of audio energyfor the first video communication and the second video communication. 5.The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the dominant participantcomprises determining that a level of audio energy has been sustainedabove a given level for more than a predetermined threshold period oftime.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying the dominantparticipant applies a weight in favor of a current dominant participant,the weight being inversely proportional to a time since the currentvideo communication was selected.
 7. A non-transitory computer-readablemedium storing instructions configured to cause one or more processorsto: receive, at a server facilitating a video conversation between aplurality of participants, information pertaining to a videocommunication from each of the plurality of participants; identify oneof the participants as a dominant participant based on comparing aconfidence score calculated for each participant based on the receivedinformation; calculate a relevancy metric for each of the participants;and override the identified dominant participant when the relevancymetric for another participant exceeds the confidence score for theidentified dominant participant by a predetermined amount.
 8. The mediumof claim 7, wherein the instructions are further configured to cause theone or more processors to: transmit information to all participants thatcause a device, configured to display a user interface for a videoconversation, the user interface comprising a main window and one ormore secondary windows, to: display the dominant participant in the mainwindow of the user interface and other participants in the one of moresecondary windows of the user interface; and display another one of theparticipants in the main window of the user interface of the currentdominant participant.
 9. The medium of claim 7, calculating therelevancy metric comprises determining that one of the participants isassociated with a media effect.
 10. The medium of claim 7, wherein theinformation pertaining to the first video communication from eachparticipant comprises data packets having headers indicating levels ofaudio energy for the first video communication and the second videocommunication.
 11. The medium of claim 10, wherein identifying thedominant participant comprises determining that a level of audio energyhas been sustained above a given level for more than a predeterminedthreshold period of time.
 12. The medium of claim 7, wherein identifyingthe dominant participant applies a weight in favor of a current dominantparticipant, the weight being inversely proportional to a time since thecurrent dominant video communication was selected.
 13. An apparatuscomprising: a non-transitory computer readable medium configured tostore instructions for facilitating a video conversation; and aprocessor configured to execute the instructions, the instructionsconfigured to cause the processor to: receive, at a server facilitatingthe video conversation between a plurality of participants, informationpertaining to a video communication from each of the plurality ofparticipants; identify one of the participants as a dominant participantbased on comparing a confidence score calculated for each participantbased on the received information; calculate a relevancy metric for eachof the participants; and override the identified dominant participantwhen the relevancy metric for another participant exceeds the confidencescore for the identified dominant participant by a predetermined amount.14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the instructions furtherconfigured to cause the processor to: transmit information to allparticipants that cause a device, configured to display a user interfacefor a video conversation, the user interface comprising a main windowand one or more secondary windows, to: display the dominant participantin the main window of the user interface and other participants in theone of more secondary windows of the user interface; and display anotherone of the participants in the main window of the user interface of thecurrent dominant participant.
 15. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein theinformation pertaining to the video communication from each participantcomprises data packets having headers indicating levels of audio energyfor the first video communication and the second video communication.16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein identifying the dominantparticipant comprises determining that a level of audio energy has beensustained above a given level for more than a predetermined thresholdperiod of time.
 17. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein identifying thedominant participant applies a weight in favor of a current dominantparticipant, the weight being inversely proportional to a time since thecurrent dominant video communication was selected.